Songoftheday 2/18/18 - Annie was a high school cheerleader, pom poms and bobby socks no girl was sweeter...
from the album Music For The People (1991)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #10 (five weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 12
Today's song of the day comes from actor and at-one-time rapper "Marky" Mark Wahlberg and his Funky Bunch, who rode all the way to #1 on the New Kids On The Block fan-wave in the fall of 1991 with the dance/hip-hop party song "Good Vibrations". But instead of continuing the positive-energy but inane path of his debut, Mark took as far of a left turn as he could have, with the ultra-heavy "message rap" offering "Wildside" as his second single. A recycled track from his collaborator MC Spice, it samples Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side" while painting very vivid and violent scenarios about life and crime in the city, two of which were ripped from the Boston papers. And who'd have thought that it would be this guy that starts a music video with a burning American flag (especially as the Wahlbergs now paint themselves as squeaky-clean rah-rah Americans nowadays)...
"Wildside" became Wahlberg's second and final top-40 pop hit in the U.S., reaching the top ten in December of 1991. Internationally, the single climbed all the way to #10 in Norway, and reached the top-40 in Switzerland (#18), Finland (#19), Sweden (#22), Ireland (#26), Austria (#26), Australia (#28), Canada (#30), The Netherlands (#30), Belgium (#30), and Germany (#33). In the UK, it stalled right under that level at #42. A third release from the Music For The People album, "I Need Money", was a minor pop hit in America at #61.
In 1992, Mark and the Bunch released a second album, You Gotta Believe. The title track just missed the top-40 at #49, but managed to nab him a Grammy nomination for Rap Solo Performance (losing out to Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby's Got Back"). The following year, Mark dropped the bunch and hooked up with Dominican-born reggae producer Prince Ital Joe for one collaborative album that was pretty successful in Europe, scoring four top-20 hits in Germany alone, including the #1 single "United". He had a couple of charting solo singles in that country as well, with "Hey DJ" reaching #58 in 1996. But since the mid-1990s, Wahlberg's most known for his acting career, starting with Danny Devito's Renaissance Man in 1993 on a string of successful movies including an Oscar nomination for his role in The Departed in 2006. Five years later, he starred in The Fighter, which was nominated for Picture of the Year at the Oscars. And of course, he had a huge (pardon the pun) presence in the movie Boogie Nights as porn star (trying to be a music star) Dirk Diggler. Also he, along with brother Donnie from New Kids, owns the Wahlburger restaurant chain.
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Here's Mark appearing live on Jay Leno's Tonight Show...
...and lastly, on the Red, Hot And Dance AIDS benefit concert...
Up tomorrow: A heavenly freestyle singer.
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